School's in this Memorial Day

Posted: Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools is backing away from an earlier plan to declare this year's Memorial Day a holiday for students because doing so would have left the district with too few days for an official school year. Georgia law requires all schools receiving state funding to provide students with at least 180 days of schooling each academic year. Without this year's Memorial Day, the district would have fallen one day short of that mark.

Memorial Day has been scheduled as a regular school day since the board unanimously approved the 2004-2005 academic year calendar in December 2003. Chatham County public school students also have gone to school on Memorial Day at least since the 2001-2002 school year.

But last month, acting superintendent George Bowen wrote the Georgia Department of Education seeking permission to take Memorial Day off while still counting it as an official school day.

In the same letter, Bowen requested a similar waiver for Sept. 27, 2004, which the district declared a holiday due to Hurricane Jeanne.

Since the board-approved calendar for 2004-2005 included exactly 180 days, the district needed to either make up or get a waiver for any unscheduled days off.

In his letter to the state, Bowen, a former Air Force colonel, said he wanted to make Memorial Day a holiday because he had heard from many veterans on the issue.

"It is developing into a serious problem," he wrote.

The state board of education approved the waiver for Sept. 27 but declined to address the waiver for Memorial Day because it does not have the authority to do so, according to Department of Education spokesman Dana Tofig.

"We're essentially saying because September 27 (was lost to a hurricane) it's okay to have 179 days," Tofig said.

The state board punted on Bowen's Memorial Day request because it only grants waivers when there are extenuating circumstances, Tofig said.

Georgia law gives the state board of education the power to authorize local boards to "depart from a strict interpretation" of the 180-day rule in the case of national or state emergencies, "disaster, acts of God, civil disturbance, or a shortage of vital and critical material, supplies, or fuel."

Additionally, state law gives local boards the authority to end the school year with fewer than 180 days, provided that the district ends the last complete week of the year with at least 176 days and those missing days were lost to one of the causes above.

Upon reviewing the Memorial Day issue, the Savannah-Chatham County board's attorney concluded the district would be violating state law if it gave students the day off.

"Really, when it comes to things like that we have to follow the law," district spokesman James Harvey said.

Harvey acknowledged that Bowen had a personal stake in the issue.

"As a veteran, he regrets that he has to do that. He's sensitive (to those issues) like any veteran. In this instance, under state law and given the time constraints, we just could not provide that."